Texas GOP clown Pete Sessions last made the news when he suggested the doomed Republicans become more like the Taliban. As the modern Republican is already a fundamentalist nut who buggers little boys, hates science, fears women and constantly fantasizes about being killed for/by God, the only thing left was for the remaining wingnuts to move into caves, with their tea bags and their goats. And this may well have happened, as only 21% of Americans reachable by telephone now admit to being Republican. Anyway, now Pete Sessions is saying Obama is intentionally (and magically) causing both unemployment and a decline in the stock markets. True, maybe?! MORE »

Do you own some terrible old car? Probably not! But you might be making payments on some terrible old car. Communist Premier Nobama and his Duma-Politburo (the House and Senate) have got a great deal for you: Just trade in your gas-guzzling sticker-covered crapmobilie full of McDonald’s bags for a shiny new better-mileage-getting Automobile of the Future, and you’ll get $4,500. That is, what, equal to about a year’s worth of unemployment? MORE »

NATION OF UNDERWATER HOMEOWNERS: According to some estimates, about 20 percent of people with mortgages owe more on their homes than what they’re actually worth. Your mileage may vary depending on whether there are a lot of foreclosures in your area, because fire-sale pricing will naturally depress surrounding home values even more than just a gradual dropoff in the sales price of non-foreclosed homes. Also, owing 105% of your house’s value is a hell of a lot better than owing, say, 200%, but both count as “underwater.” The bottom line is this: if you own real estate of any sort, you are DOOMED, forever, to an eternity of anal invasion by Mortgage Demons bearing poison-tipped pitchforks. [Wall Street Journal]

Barack Obama ate a hamburger… Sarah Palin got a gun… torture, they’re still going on about that… Sean Hannity is insane… what else today? Oh right, the thing, the thing where goods and services are bought and sold and jobs and money and stuff! Ben Bernanke said optimistic things about it today, albeit with a tragically ambiguous, stinging back: “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said today that the nation’s rate of economic contraction may be slowing and that he expects growth to resume later this year, but he also suggested that the economy could perform well below its potential for years to come.” What is this nonsense about the American economy having “potential”? Like building GREEN CARS and shit? [Washington Post]

HUZZAH WE ARE ALL RICH AGAIN: “The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, a key gauge of the broader market and the benchmark for many investors’ index funds, erased all its 2009 losses just before the close.” So yay, we are “only” as poor as we were on January 1, which is to say, quite. [New York Times]

Look everyone, a wacky sentence: “WASHINGTON — Federal bank regulators plan to release the much-anticipated results of their ’stress tests’ on the nation’s 19 biggest banks next Thursday, several days later than they had originally expected, in part because some of the banks continue to disagree with the government’s initial conclusions.” You do remember these things — the banks, the government bailouts, the stress tests, YOUR LIFE, and that thing that ties them all together, the Economy — right? They’re still “big deals” even if they aren’t so much in the news, because now the issue of whether or not we should throw a few dumb ex-government lawyers in jail has become ALL THAT MATTERS, while people continue to starve. MORE »

Remember how Barack Obama doesn’t want to own all these companies, and he’s so tired of having to be CEO of basically everything, and really he just wants to have his wars and play basketball? Well, today is a new day, and Obama is now making Chrysler go bankrupt. But it’s not Chrysler’s fault! It’s not the unions’ fault. Like every bad thing, it is the fault of speculators, stock-jobbers, and other “hedge funds.” Let’s liveblog his speech! MORE »

For many months now, people have been asking why Ken Lewis still had his job as chairman and CEO of Bank of America, and for many months the answer has been “Because,” but now we have a new answer: as of last night he is only the CEO, and who knows how much longer he’ll have that gig. MORE »

Are you part of the “broader tapestry of American life,” as Mr. Cool just said? How have you enjoyed Intern Juli as she helmed the HMS Liveblog Ship of State? HA AT EXACTLY THAT MOMENT OBAMA REFERRED TO AMERICA AS “THAT BATTLESHIP,” which is what McCain used to call him, because McCain calls everybody “that battleship.” Let’s continue the liveblogging! We are humbled by it, and we are patient by it. MORE »

It’s official for Sad America: As the economy shrunk another 6.1% in the first quarter of 2009, the total GDP loss for this recession (so far!) is 3.3%, making this the worst recession since the legendary “Elvis Downtown” of 1957-58. And there’s only one economic collapse larger than our current horror: the Great Depression of 1929-c.1940. We sure hope Obama’s 100th Fireside Chat tonight is a doozy! [Bloomberg]

Not that we should put much faith in what Professional Auditors say, but a terrifying new report predicts that a fourth of America’s remaining publicly-traded companies may be gone by the end of the year. This means 3,600 shareholder-owned businesses are in “going concern” territory, or in serious danger of failure in the next 12 months — and this is just based on first-quarter reports, which are already up 9% vs. 2008 “going concern” filings, so, uhm. MORE »